The Macready
by WillowDryad
Summary: Fresh from the wardrobe, Peter tries to adjust to life in England once more. Post LWW.


**Disclaimer: Peter Pevensie, Mrs. Macready and all the characters and situations in the Chronicles of Narnia belong to C. S. Lewis and not to me. **

THE MACREADY

Peter crept out of the girls' room, careful not to make a sound as he shut the door behind him. He and Susan had agreed, once they had gotten their bearings at least to some degree, that she would get Lucy to sleep and he would do the same with Edmund. He wasn't sure who had had the hardest time of it. The little ones, they were so little again. Lucy was hardly more than a baby now. Of course, she was adorable whether she was eight or twenty-three, but there was quite a difference between the two, and even sunny-hearted Lucy had been devastated by their sudden change of fortune. Susan had tried her best to look after her, and that left Edmund to Peter.

Poor Ed. He tried so hard to remember all he had learned in his time as King, as judge and diplomat. A fine one he'd been, too. Peter had always thought there was a touch of Solomon in his younger brother and often wondered if that wasn't something Edmund had asked of Aslan. Edmund hadn't been there for those first Christmas gifts Peter and Susan and Lucy had been given (and, yes, this was his own fault), so maybe Aslan had let him ask later for something of his very own. It would be like Edmund, especially early on when he was so unsure of himself, so afraid he would fail the Great Lion who had forgiven his treason and set him on a better path, so afraid he would be too weak to choose the right. But that wisdom and experience was of little value when one was suddenly and most unexpectedly a ten-year-old boy again and an exhausted one at that.

Peter didn't blame him for the tears. He'd only just held back his own in trying to comfort him and then Susan. Once the younger two had fallen asleep, Peter had sat with her, rubbing her back and stroking her hair, the black hair that fell only halfway to her waist now and no longer nearly to her feet. Susan had been accounted the most beautiful woman in Narnia and all the lands, but now she was only a pretty child, touched with the promise of beauty but still with the gangly awkwardness of any other twelve-year-old. But she had wept a woman's aching tears in his arms, wept for the loss of her beauty and her grace and the Queen she had been.

Once a King or Queen, always a King or Queen he had told her and himself, but it didn't seem possible. Not just yet. Not now when the raw shock of these old/new bodies was so fresh. At least he was still tall. Poor Ed was shorter than Susan now and not all that much taller than Lucy. Peter had himself been taller still, he knew, broader in the shoulders and sleek muscled from training and from battle itself. But now he was a boy again, pale and slender, loose limbed like a new colt. He put his hand to his smooth jaw.

"At least I won't have to bother with shaving for awhile longer," he muttered, and then the sobs overtook him.

He sank against the cool wall of the corridor, his head leaning back against it, his eyes screwed shut and his forearm flung over them. It was gone, all gone. His kingdom, his home, the Lion–

"Oh, Aslan," he breathed. "Aslan, why–"

"Shouldn't you be in bed, young man?"

The Macready! Peter snapped to attention, scrubbing the tears away with his sleeve, gulping down the last of his sobs.

"Y-yes, ma'am. I'm sorry, ma'am. My– my youngest sister, she was upset and we were trying to get her to sleep."

Mrs. Macready narrowed her eyes at him behind her spectacles. How odd it seemed to see her there in her dressing gown with her hair down her back and not done up in its usual practical bun.

"It's Peter, isn't it?"

No doubt, this early in their stay, he was merely part of that collective she labeled "the children." But she didn't seem too very cross, and he ventured a little nod.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Your sister's all right then?"

"Yes, ma'am, thank you. They're both asleep now. Edmund, too."

"How old are you, Peter?"

"I'm twen– Uh, thirteen, ma'am."

"So young," she said with a shake of her head and more to herself than to him. "Good of you to look after all of them, Peter."

"N-no, ma'am."

One greying eyebrow went up. "No?"

"It's not good of me, ma'am. It's just–" He bit his lip. "It's what I'm meant to do."

There was the tiniest bit of a twinkle in her eye. "Ah, well, if that is your function, we mustn't deprive you of it, must we?"

He didn't quite know how to answer that, so he only shook his head.

"Are you sleepy, Peter?"

"No, ma'am."

He didn't know why he said it. He was more desperately tired than he could remember ever being before, even after the longest of their journeys, even after battle. He could tell the housekeeper didn't believe him, but she only gave him a nod.

"I was going to make some tea. Would you like some?"

"Yes, thank you, ma'am."

He wasn't sure why he had accepted. Why in the world would he want to have tea with this stern old woman? He wanted fine Narnian tea sweetened with honey delivered by the Bees themselves, tea poured out by a Badger or a Hedgehog or a Dryad. He wanted it served in the gracious marble halls of Cair Paravel overlooking the silver sea with his lovely sister-Queens beside him and his wise, snarky brother-King restless to do something other than "sit around drinking infernal tea." But he wasn't ready yet to be alone with those losses, and tea, strong English tea, might be just the thing to ease him back into this world.

He followed her down to the kitchen, and they sat for a while in silence as she fussed with the kettle. She set a little plate of ginger snaps in front of him, and he took one. There was something comforting about it.

"Now tell me, young man, what's upset your wee sister tonight?"

He sighed. "We were, um, playing a game, the four of us, and I suppose none of us was quite ready to have it end."

She set a cup of tea in front of him along with the honey jar. How she knew he liked honey in his tea, he didn't know, but that, too, was somehow comforting.

"A grand adventure, was it?" she asked as she sat across from him with her own cup. "Are you sorry you ever played it then?"

He smiled a little to himself. It had been a grand adventure. He tried to think back on the hard things, the battles and the dangers and the fears, and they all seemed to be blurring a little, softening around the edges, becoming something his thirteen-year-old mind could bear.

But all the beauty, the glory and the splendor and the honor of it, it hung bright and clear behind his eyes. And Aslan was there, living gold and terrible majesty, and Peter realized He would always be there, even when the rest of the memories faded.

He smiled at the housekeeper, still feeling a bit shy. "No, ma'am. Not sorry. I don't suppose there are many who get the opportunity for real adventures. Not like these."

"You're right, young man, and be grateful." There was just the slightest hint of merriment in her expression. "And keep your eyes open for the next one."

He swallowed his scalding-hot tea a little more quickly than he had intended. "Ma'am?"

"You know, this _is_ a very strange house. Even the Professor knows very little about it, and I've been here myself nearly as long as he."

Peter opened his mouth and then closed it again and then just blinked at her.

"Are you so daft, young man, as to think you're the only one who ever had an adventure?"


End file.
